CentOS as a group is a community of open source contributors and users. Typical CentOS users are organisations and individuals that do not need strong commercial support in order to achieve successful operation. CentOS is 100% compatible rebuild of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux, in full compliance with Red Hat's redistribution requirements. CentOS is for people who need an enterprise class operating system stability without the cost of certification and support.

Johnny Hughes has announced the release of CentOS 5.11, the distribution's final release in the 5.x branch: "We are pleased to announce the immediate availability of CentOS 5.11 for i386 and x86_64 architectures. CentOS 5.11 is based on source code released by Red Hat, Inc. and it includes packages from all variants, including Server and Client." The release announcement includes a note on the Bash "shellshock" vulnerability: "The Bash version included on the CentOS 5.11 ISO images is a version that contains the shellshock vulnerability. When we create CentOS ISO images, we try to mirror the same package versions that are on the upstream ISO images from Red Hat, whose ISO images also contain that vulnerability. An updated Bash is available as a zero day update in the 5.11 updates repository now. Please run 'yum update bash' after install